Concluding Statement by Daniel

First of all, I once again thank Frank for this debate which has indeed been very stimulating and revealing to me, as I hope it is likewise true for all our readers.

I read with astonishment Frank’s final statement. The amount of misrepresentations abounds in what he says, with the most audacious being that he has cited Scripture to prove his case, as if mere quantity of Scripture citations equals orthodoxy! If quantity of citations alone equals being right in one’s view, then not only is Rick Warren very orthodox, but likewise the German higher critics, whom I am sure quoted liberally from the Pentateuch as they promote the Documentary Hypothesis, were the most orthodox.

On the Confessions, there is a reason why I focus on non-Baptists. The Particular Baptists were more interested in being allowed to practice their religion instead of thinking of uniting Christians under one visible Church. Therefore, it is clear that their confession did not have such intent, so why should I belabor the obvious just so that I can give a cursory nod to my Baptist brethren?

It is pointless to show how Frank has virtually misrepresented almost all of my points as they so blatantly contradict what I have written in my statement. I will just focus on two examples. The first one deals with my proposition that local church life is to be practiced between believers. The only reason why Frank does not get it is because he like his hero Douglas Wilson collapses the internal and external aspects of the covenant into one. For Frank, children cannot be baptized because they prior to confession are not in the covenant. There is no category of being in the external aspect of the covenant of grace in Frank’s view. Conversely, the flattening out of the covenantal aspects mean that all who are “externally” in the church are also to be considered “internally” in the church (for there is no external/internal distinction) and therefore sly unbelievers who have not been disciplined as a member in any “church” (however that is defined) are to be considered true Christians. In the former case of infants, Frank’s errant ecclesiology refuses covenant inclusion because he has no category of being in the external aspect of the covenant, while in the latter, Frank’s view refuses covenant exclusion because he has no category for believers being in the internal aspect of the covenant of grace.

In the second example, Frank missed the fact that the OPC, the PCA and the URCNA have approved ecclesiastical statements denouncing the Federal Vision, of which I have given links to the OPC 2006 Justification Report and the URCNA Nine Points of Synod Schereville 2007. Robbins and Gerety’s book is probably the only one targeting Doug Wilson specifically so I gave that as a reference. There are other books denouncing the Federal Vision however like the one by Guy Prentiss Waters entitled The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology: A Comparative Analysis^[1] and the book edited by R. Scott Clark, Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry.^[2]

Frank may continue to stick his head in the sand and ignore the multitude of pastors, professors and denominations denouncing Federal Vision as heresy, but he is in denial. I hereby call upon Frank to repent of his heretical leanings and turn to the truth. I likewise would like to take the opportunity to call upon all and sundry to reject Frank’s semi-heretical ecclesiology and the Federal Vision in toto. Avoid the Federal Vision and men like Douglas Wilson, Steve Wilkins, James Jordon, Peter Leithart, Jeffrey Meyers and all who are in the CREC “denomination”. These people are wolves in sheep clothing and following them would lead in the same direction as Rome, towards perdition.

Amen.

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References:

[1] Guy Prentiss Water, The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology: A Comparative Analysis (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R, 2006)

[2] R. Scott Clark (ed.), Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry: Essays by the Faculty of Westminster Seminary California (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R, 2007)

Frank's Final Statement

Well, sadly, this is my closing statement for this exchange – Daniel, as is the custom here, gets the final word and I am pleased to give it to him. My closing thoughts, in no particular order:

• The really exciting parts of this exchange were that I am an adherent to the Federal Vision – when in fact all of the confessional documents I have referred to and endorsed were the confessions of the reformation (in spite of the fact that Daniel disqualified the LBCF as truly confessional and reformational – because they are filthy Baptists, of course); that the Reformed position (in spite of the statements in the actual confessions) is that men can see and must discern the invisible church (even though it is invisible, you see); the somehow it’s my view that church body life trumps orthodoxy even though I explicitly said someone anathematized should leave, and that it is a proper mark of the church to exercise church discipline. It’s exciting to see people who have such a damaged view of proper theology that they will read bankrupt defectiveness in anyone who points them to their own confessions and says, “well, it’s clear that this is not what your confession says – maybe you should repent of that and rethink your problem.”
• Daniel thinks that the reformed placed the full force of their confessions on making the church a place for believers only. The problem, for anyone with one good eye, is that it is the reformed confessions which demand that the sign and seal of Christ’s convenant with his people – baptism – is for all believers and their children! It is in fact the credobaptist demand that the church be full of only believers. And I assume that Daniel is not one of those – he’s a reformed guy after all.
• I like it that Daniel is certain he has been arguing for separation from churches which teach false doctrine, but that his one and only example of post-reformation heretical churches to be separated from is Doug Wilson – a man never anathematized and never even tried by any Presbytery session. But because John Robbins has written a book about Doug, well, who are we to argue? That’s as good as the Council of Orange in Daniel’s book.
• With regard to the confessions, I did explicitly from the documents themselves indicate the explicit intent of the authors who write them. That Daniel rejects these statements in favor of his own opinion again speaks volumes – this time, in reference to whether he is really all about how “churches” use the doctrine of separation and how he think people using their own judgment should use it.
• I also like that because my list of three uses for the 3 marks of the church didn’t include, for example, disfellowshipping the adulterer or shunning the liar, Daniel thinks that I’m in favor of unity at all costs. Even the most remotely-fair reading on my answer to his question would find that I think the three marks govern almost all of what a church should do or seek to achieve. That he cannot see that ought to inform the reader of his agenda.
• One of the two participants here strictly cited and referred to the confession and made his points based on them; the other didn’t. The reader can decide for himself which of those two actually holds the confessions in high regard and which is simply a parrot of one view of confessional life.
• Last, I enjoy it that I actually cited Scripture and pointed to the problems of Daniel’s view from the Scripture, while he has merely declared me false with no textual evidence.

No sense in belaboring this: Daniel has an open word count to issue his final statement. I thank the readers of this exchange for their time and patience.

3rd Statement by Daniel Chew (Affirmative)

I must say that the answers by Frank in the cross-examination have been very informative and revealing. First of all, I need to briefly correct some misrepresentations of my position.

It is simply wrong that I necessarily advocate cutting off from anyone who has sufficient theological flaws. It is also wrong that I would necessarily deem any church a false church by merely taking part in one 40 Days of Purpose campaign. Such errors on Frank’s part suggest that Frank not only did not truly bother to understand my position, but he simply reads his stereotype of what the doctrine of separation looks like into this debate. More specifically, he reads the Fundamentalist idea of separation into the debate, whereas my view is the Reformed view not the Fundamentalist one. Seeing that I made that clear early in the debate, Frank is without excuse in bashing a straw man.

We must remember that the debate thesis is the necessity of separation from false churches. The debate is not about all the nuances of how the doctrine of separation is to be applied to individuals qua persons, and I thus only address individuals in their ecclesiastical positions.

To digress briefly, Frank totally misunderstands infant baptism in his answer to my second question, and since I wasn’t asking about infant baptism in that question, his attack there was a cheap shot! We baptize infants not upon some “Gospel offer” but because infants are in the external aspect of the covenant of grace (i.e. the visible church). Seeing however that Frank does not get the visible/ invisible church distinction, I guess I should not expect Frank to understand this, but interested parties may want to check out Robert Reymond’s A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith^[1] and John Fesko’s recent book Word, Water, and Spirit^[2].

As I see it, the main difference between us is ecclesiology. Frank Turk holds to the Federal Vision ecclesiology, while I hold to Reformed ecclesiology. Let me unpack this so we can see the difference between the two.

First of all, we can see that Frank has no real use for the visible/ invisible church distinction. Instead, when pressed, Frank mocks the concept of the invisible church as requiring men to “discern the invisible inside the visible church.”

The Reformed understanding of the Visible/ Invisible Church distinction is succinctly described in Pastor Wes White’s blog article on the Federal Vision:^[3]

Classic Protestant theology defined the Church as true believers in Christ. … However, these theologians also recognized that God had commanded that believers come together for joint profession, worship, and discipline. The problem is that in this external communion many gather who are not actual believers and do not possess forgiveness of sins, union with Christ, new life, and adoption. As a result, they [these theologians] followed the Bible in distinguishing the Church as it appears from the Church as it really is (see Mt. 13). This is often called the visible/invisible Church distinction.

The importance of the visible/invisible church distinction in the Church is in informing us that not everyone who is in the church is saved, and we should not presume their salvation. Rather, we judge according to their confession. With regards to churches, we are not to presume any entity that calls itself a church to be a true church, but rather to check for the biblical marks of the true church and evaluate accordingly.

The Federal Vision objectivized salvation within the church and collapsed the visible/invisible church distinction such that almost everyone in the church and every church must be taken as a church of Christ, to which all the commands for fellowshipping and giving believers the benefit of the doubt are to be applied. We can see the Federal Vision error in Frank’s position as he applies all the biblical imperatives on Christian interaction to everyone and every church where possible. The traditional Reformed position is that all these are to be applied within believers. In other words, in the Reformed position, orthodoxy precedes church body life. The problem with Frank and the Federal Vision is that church body life trumps everything including orthodoxy.

Frank’s identification with Federal Vision can be even more clearly seen when he thinks there are no problems with Douglas Wilson. This is serious as Reformed and Presbyterian denominations have denounced Federal Vision as heresy,^[4] although it is admitted they focused more on the implications its ecclesiology has on the doctrine of justification. A good book specifically on Federal Vision proponent Doug Wilson is the one by John Robbins and Sean Gerety entitled Not Reformed At All.^[5]

The doctrine of separation according to Frank can only be applied when one is kicked out of the church, as in Roman Catholicism. Other than that, the marks of the church are merely characteristics that churches have to work towards and to work from. Such positions taken by Frank are more evidences for his Federal Vision objectivization of the covenant whereby churches and all who are in churches are to be considered Christian not because of their true confession but because they are churches and people in the churches, a position which we can being tirelessly promoted throughout this debate.

On the Reformed confessions, Frank did not answer the question put to him. The confessions were composed for many purposes, and listing down some of them does not mean that they were not meant to exclude unbelievers. It must be remembered that the confessions were written to show that the Reformers were not part of the radical Anabaptist movement, and therefore one of the purpose was to exclude these unbelievers. The ecclesiastical canon which is most explicit in being used to exclude unbelievers is of course the Canons of Dordt, which rejected the heretical opinions of the Classical Arminians and was the basis for excommunicating them from the churches.

While not all doctrines are major, the whole faith is essential, as Dr. Mike Horton puts it.^[6] The Confessional Maximalist view therefore regards the Confession as regulating the faith, and thus impacting the way the marks are evaluated. It is in this light that Frank’s trivializing of the Canon of Scripture is disturbing. While materially true, such a cavalier approach to the canon of Scripture (the formal principle of the Reformation) is a formal attack on the authority of Scripture. It is one thing to be honestly struggling with which books are in the Canon; it is another thing to think that changing the Canon by itself (even if no doctrines are changed) is of little importance. Such is the difference between honest enquiry and disregard for God’s Word and its authority.

Going back to the biblical data on the Galatian and Corinthian churches, we can clearly see from the beginning of the epistle that Paul wrote Galatians harshly because the essential doctrine of the Gospel was at stake, whereas in Corinth the believers were misbehaving but the church was not in danger of losing the Gospel. Frank’s argument on this fails to properly interpret the epistles. Corinth was not in any danger of degenerating into a false church whereas the ones at Galatia were. What this means for us is that doctrine is more important than practice for Paul as it should be for us. The terrible state of the Corinthian church is therefore not an apologetic for not emphasizing the importance of having a true church. Separation after all is for a true church, not a pure church.

Putting all this together, we can see the main contention arise because of Frank’s Federal Vision ecclesiology. This colors his understanding of the text and results in bizarre understanding of Galatians and Corinthians.

The position I am advocating rejects Frank’s Federal Vision ecclesiology. Rather, we are to apply the marks of a true church to discern true from false churches and separate from false churches. The Reformed Confessions aid us in this aspect as one of their intentions was to exclude unbelievers like the Arminians, the Soccinians, the Arians and others like them.

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References:

[1] Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 2nd Ed. (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1998),935-950

[2] John V. Fesko, Word, Water, and Spirit: A Reformed Perspective on Baptism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Reformation Heritage, 2010)

[3] Wes White, "Reply to the Joint FV Profession, Part 5 — The Denial of the Visible/Invisible Church Distinction", Johannes Weslianus. Accessed online at http://www.weswhite.net/2010/03/reply-to-joint-fv-profession-part-5/ (Mar 01, 2011).

[4] See for example the 2006 OPC report on Justification (accessible at http://www.opc.org/GA/justification.pdf) and The Nine Points of URCNA Synod Schereville 2007 (accessible at http://clark.wscal.edu/9points.php).

[5] John W. Robbins and Sean Gerety, Not Reformed At All: Medievalism in “Reformed” Churches (Unicoi, Tennessee: Trinity Foundation), 101-128

[6] Michael S. Horton, “The Whole Faith is Essential: Part 1”, Valiant for Truth blog (http://wscal.edu/blog/entry/the-whole-faith-is-essential-part-1). Michael S. Horton, “The Whole Faith is Essential: Part 2”, Valiant for Truth blog (http://wscal.edu/blog/entry/the-whole-faith-is-essential-part-2)

Cross-X done

I have finished asking all the questions I want to ask. Thanks.

A#9 to Daniel

I think it's somewhat amusing that in a debate about separation -- that is, the demand that an individual must cut himself off from anyone with sufficient theological flaws -- Daniel is making much of ecclesiastical uses of doctrine. He can't really decide what he's demanding or when the demand became evident in the practice of the church, so he treads back to one set of doctrines which, he hopes, look enough like his demand to make some case for cutting off pastors with a lifetime of valuable and faithful ministry because of their associations with questionable characters.

That said, here are three uses of the 3 marks:

1. Didactic: that is, to systematize the teaching of Scripture for the sake of teaching the faithful about the purpose of the church. It creates catechories for what Scripture teaches in a more-organic way.

2. Ecclesiological: that is, it defines what a church is and therefore what it is not. It sets the boundaries for mission and practice.

3. Missiological: that is, it creates priorities for the practical work of the church. Items not inside the three marks are secondary at best and therefore are not priorities for those who are seeking to do what the church ought to do.

Thanks for asking.

Cross-X Q9 for Frank

Q9: Indeed. Frank, do you personally see any use for the teaching of the marks of the true church?